Anne Blonstein


 

 

 

 

Im Frühling

 

 

a black mare :

and i had wished that
one of the snowflakes would
find refuge on his eyelashes
so that i could lick it
into the countries between us

 

50 years :

a dash of else lasker-schuler's
mauve pepper in a glass
of nelly sachs' tears accompanied
by the taste of chocolate
these words cannot change

 

a silver jacket :

you cannot come to me
in the night nor do
we meet in my dreams
unless you were the unhealing
burn whose pain woke me

 

CHF 14,000 :

they become citizens after they
have died the artists and
musicians (klee schwitters veress)
of countries in which the word
home can find no rhymes

 

a red waistband :

she comes to concerts for
the sixth and seventh dimensions
that digital screens and speakers
will never figure : that beat
inside and outside these letters

 

the colour nothing :

this night
you sat next to her in a baroque room
with yellow curtains
and wrote with her pencil
on the programme
this other poem

 

you :

schatten unter
scharfen augen
nichts nötiger als

 

cheese roll :

but if the music had indeed
stopped several bars before
it faded out the ellipses and
question mark would have been justified
                                                                 towards the future …?

 

she :

meaning- and economy-risking zones

 

me :

asked to draw a map
of tonight i'd say

 

i :

english has no diacritical accents

 

 


 

vielmehr experimentelle Programmierung jenseits von Spartengrenze

 

 

tragoedia :

when the rains fail
when the rains fail
when the rains fail
again | locusts devour the millet |
gypsy moth caterpillars feed on the acacias

 

mosaic :

a crust of henna to absorb the fever
a pair of hands to absound
the harp strings | camel and cello
to abandon the obvious

 

reverb :

where have all the vultures gone?
and why does the sky always break
into pieces in her poems? is the pianist
pregnant? music addictive?

 

frenzy :

madness in no
dimensions | no madness in
death | nomads driven
into misery | identity
means no difference |
does it matter
nearly? | much noise
damages intimacy

 

she :

memory as indictment

 

me :

wearing a shale earring that
crumbles more easily than cheese

 


 

the back streets of the old

 

 

 

kanun :

i want you to hear
dust on the shadows' feet
as they measure our virtues

 

drum :

these pauses     are cracks in
     the walls of our minds
that wait     for another
                                      earthquake

 

kanun :

splinted | bandaged | does the conductor's
left hand pull the air
into the pitch of despair?

kemençe :

because he's also a pianist
ach — i wish my voice
could vibrate chances into choices

 

she (the antiromantic) :

nearing our vinyl end may
blend ethnic rules

 

piano :

but surely : in melding your
ottoman modes with our models
you are practising a politics?

 

kanun & kemençe :

although absorbing anatolian
armenian african american
arabesques argues what
you know as
what you write

 

she (the dative) :

nonparametric orchestrated vulnerability
elongates meaning beyond encounter's range

 

me :

in microtones of black
walking through the medieval alleys of basel

 

i :

the wind plucks me back

from "and draw her home with music"